These rocking students of jazz have first mastered their classical chops. Brown has been a fixture of local combos for years, said Tony Hammond, RMC director of bands.

A Billings native, Williams started piano when she was five, and took on saxophone in 5th grade. “Tony Hammond and Thomas Burke [adjunct professor of saxophone] have made an impression,” she said. She plays arrangements of Schumann and a classical oboe concerto by Marcello, a Benson concertino, and a Villa-Lobos fantasia.

Parker Brown said, “I am excited to play Serge Koussevitzky's “Chanson Triste.” Koussevitsky was a bass player, and the piece has a haunting quality. It also has a lot of emotion, and if I can play it to my potential, it should be a real tearjerker.”

He also offers Romberg’s string bass concerto and an arrangement of Fauré’s “Aprés un Rêve,” then Williams and he combine for Rodgers and Hart’s 1937 swing standard “Have You Met Miss Jones?” Sandi Rabas and Josiah Hamilton accompany Williams and Brown on the piano.

Brown said, “When I was 21-ish, I started playing upright and electric bass a bit but never wanted to give up the work I had put into guitar over the years. When I was 26, I started playing electric bass almost exclusively. A few years ago, Alex Nauman moved to town, and I felt a strong urge to become a competent upright bass player in jazz, and that led to a deeper desire to learn classical music and technique.” Brown is also competent playing harmonica, drums, and ukulele. He has his RMC senior recital already scheduled for spring of 2015.

Brown was born in Billings and grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, “watching and listening to my dad’s bands perform and aspiring to be like them. It was a lot of great American music, mostly rooted in blues, but with a lot of great songwriters, obscure rock and roll, and lots of Frank Zappa.”